10/17/17

Better Software 2017

I had the good opportunity to speak at and attend TechWell's Better Software West in Las Vegas in June, 2017. I helped present a workshop on Agile Risk Management, which was a great experience, but I also sketched the talks I was able to attend. Here are some of the highlights. Click on the images to see larger versions.

Tanya Kravtsov from Audible presented a keynote on "Finding the Bottlenecks in the Agile and DevOps Delivery Cycle."

Neal Ford of Thoughtworks gave a presentation called "Modern Evolutionary Software Architecture." It is based on his new book "Building Evolutionary Architectures."
Its idea is that incremental developments in software engineering practices require rethinking how architecture changes over time. Ford presents ideas for designing an architecture that allows for evolution.

Agile coaches Bob Galen and Josh Anderson took coaching to the next level by comparing "Football + Agile: Like Peanut Butter & Jelly?". This was a fun talk, but it also gave some real insights into how coaching can improve the team.

Ken Johnston of Microsoft gave a keynote on "Big Data: The Magic to Attain New Heights." He explained how Microsoft uses big data to assess everything from security and threat detection to a study on preventing SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).

Ryan Ripley of the Agile for Humans podcast gave a really interesting talk on "The No Estimates Movement." I had previously heard Woody Zuill talk about this, and Ryan's presentation made me eager to try this out. #noEstimates

Some of the most interesting and useful presentations were those that "accidentally" attended. "Agile Release Planning" by Sarah Harper was one such talk. Within the hour I purchased a book she recommended, "Actionable Agile Metrics."